What’s a reasonable amount to buy your
silence with a non-disclosure agreement? Is it the $130,000 allegedly paid to
adult film star Stormy Daniels? Or maybe it’s the $150,000 doled out to former
Playboy model Karen McDougal to shut her up.
In my case, the price to keep me quiet was
less, a lot less, as in fifty dollars. Let me explain.
My story begins with a Caribbean getaway
last March booked through a firm I’ll call Sunwing because that, in fact, is
the firm’s name. My wife and I travelled to Cayo Coco in Cuba and were looking
forward to a restful, sunny beach holiday. Sadly, that was not to be.
The trip was not an unmitigated disaster
but there were enough shortfalls that we felt that some compensation was owing
to us. We stayed in an aging, mold-infested room with peeling paint although,
on the bright side, we had hot water, a comfortable bed and a functioning air
conditioner.
The resort was recovering from Hurricane
Irma and we therefore made allowances for that. However, Irma did not excuse
the sad condition of the resort’s public washrooms or the stagnant, fetid pool
outside the main restaurant. Most importantly, we happened to be there when the
resort was restoring its beach resulting in murky water and no shade umbrellas
or palapas.
There
were other minor irritants but it was the loss of the beach for our one-week
stay which we felt deserved some compensation. Not a full refund or anything
close to that amount but at least a token ten or twenty percent reduction in
the overall cost of our package.
So once we got back home, I took computer
keyboard in hand and wrote the tour operator, outlined the problems we
encountered and requested some money back. Not surprisingly, the operator
blamed everything on the resort and said it wasn’t responsible for its
shortcomings.
I persisted in my complaint and was
ultimately successful in getting Sunwing to agree to have the resort compensate
us fifty dollars for our troubles. And that was no ordinary fifty dollars; it
was $50 US or approximately $65 Canadian.
At that point, I figured why not take the
token offering and be done with it. After all, it was clear that unless I was
willing to go to the trouble of filing a small claims court action, I wasn’t
likely going to squeeze any more blood out of this particular stone.
So I printed off the form Sunwing required
me to sign in order to access the wealth on offer. What I was asked to sign,
however, looked to be drafted by an understudy of Donald Trump’s lawyer Michael
Cohen.
The payment would not be an admission of
liability by Sunwing and the resort. Fair enough. And the fifty dollars would
be a final settlement of any claims I might have had. Also fine by me.
What rankled, however, was the final
paragraph which was essentially a hush agreement and a non-disclosure agreement
rolled into one. If I signed, I would be prohibited from “directly or
indirectly” talking about our negative experience “to anyone in any way.”
The terms of the settlement would be
confidential and we would agree that our intention would be to “avoid and prevent
publicity regarding the settlement.” Finally, if I breached the terms, I agreed
that such breach would cause “unquantifiable damages” to the tour operator and
the resort.
As I had already directly informed a
number of friends and relatives about our “negative experience” and indirectly
informed many more people in a published opinion piece, I couldn’t, in all good
conscience, agree to the onerous terms on offer. More importantly, it seemed
totally unfair and completely over the top to muzzle me forever for the grand
total of fifty dollars even if it was in American currency.
So I told Sunwing to take a hike and keep
their fifty dollars. It turns out that it’s worth a whole lot more to me to
preserve my freedom of speech. It’s also far more satisfying to vent than to
dream about how I might have spent that giant payout.
If a six-figure settlement had been on
offer like those available to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, I can’t claim
that I would have taken the high road. But I do know that my principles are
worth something more than fifty bucks.
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